From the film’s most minute details to its vast environments, 'Shrek the Third' sets a new standard in animation. “It is absolutely stunning,” states co-producer Denise Nolan Cascino. “The moment we saw the pencil sketches we knew this was going to be something special. We have a different kind of environment for ‘Shrek The Third’ and it stands out as something very special.”

Aretos describes how some of those special environments came to be: “These creations are getting very challenging. The one at the end, which is a gigantic theater show, is based on medieval machinery in theater and Vatel’s craft for Louis the XIV. It was the most fun to design as well as the most difficult. And, because the film is a road trip, the high school where Arthur is studying is in northern Europe. So, we went with more of a Brittany feel, taking our inspiration for Oxford, as well as monasteries across Europe. The other thing that we did to reinforce the idea of the Northern feeling is that everything happens in fall. We wanted to have an aesthetic shift from the eternal spring we had in the previous two movies and give it a more colorful, and at the same time, deeper, more sentimental feel.”

Donkey (EDDIE MURPHY), Puss In Boots (ANTONIO BANDERAS), Shrek (MIKE MYERS) and Fiona's underachiever cousin Artie (JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE) pay a visit to the magician Merlin (ERIC IDLE)

“Most of the environments in this film are even larger and more detailed than what we saw in ‘Shrek’ and ‘Shrek 2,’ and we tried to stay pretty accurate to the medieval time period,” says art director Peter Zaslav. “Of course, we exaggerated things, we put carvings into the wall and even created a medieval vending machine. If you look closely, you'll spot several clever little jokes. It’s always fun to infuse contemporary humor into a medieval world, so a school bus is a modified carriage. These are the little things that add to the film’s character.” When they are combined, these new approaches and effects create an amazing new world for “Shrek the Third” – a world the filmmakers could barely imagine when Shrek’s story began. “It’s so great to see it all come together,” says Gluckman. “There are some amazing moments when, after all the years that you put into the movie, you finally see specific characters or shots on screen. It’s a fantastic feeling.”

“Doing animation is like doing magic,” says Hui. “We try to perform magic every day.”

NEXT
Making Beautiful Music Together
With full knowledge that some show-stopping musical numbers helped define “Shrek” and “Shrek 2,” the filmmakers were again eager to raise the bar with “Shrek the Third.”